


echoes of history

by princesskay



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Breaking Up & Making Up, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Infidelity, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-28 15:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30141810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay
Summary: When Dennis Rader is arrested, Holden interrupts Bill's retirement in Florida under the auspices of celebration ... but his motives lie closer to a reconciliation of their broken relationship rather than with the capture of the elusive BTK Killer. Bill offers his guest bedroom, a gesture that unlocks the door to two decades worth of love and heartbreak.
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25





	1. a long way from sacramento

On the five hour flight from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida, Bill sips the in-flight bourbon and grinds his molars on tasteless nicotine gum. He’s been awake since early this morning - his biological clock permanently set at 6AM after years of working fifty hour weeks - but his exhaustion is eclipsed by fervid contemplation on the contents of his carry-on bag in the storage compartment overhead. The padded satchel safely stows his Nikon camera with three rolls of film and his handheld tape recorder which he uses for his own verbal notating and any interviews he might conduct in which the subject agrees to being recorded. 

His fingers itch to get the photographic documentation from the films processed and in his hands for scrutiny. There’s a 24-hour photo lab and print shop ten minutes from his house where he’s a frequent customer that he’ll be patronizing as soon as he lands. As per usual, it will be late enough that the shop will be deserted, his privacy and concentration secure. Julie, the girl who works behind the counter, always tells him that he’s out past his bedtime. He reminds her that he sets his own hours these days - the beauty of retirement. Or rather,  _ semi _ -retirement. His retreat to the balmy warmth and sandy beaches of Miami isn’t what he’d once envisioned.

After giving thirty-five good years to the Bureau, the time had come, at the age of sixty-five, for him to step aside to allow the fresh, young agents of the new millennium to carry on the baton. His brain was still good, but he couldn’t meet the long hours anymore; and as much as he was loathe to admit, he no longer had new ideas to bring to the table. Just as he had once criticized the Hoover-era agents for their rigid ways, his younger peers now viewed him as the monolith, the dinosaur, the out-of-date facsimile of a once pioneering agent. 

He supposed there was nothing wrong with being an old story in a new chapter of the FBI, a revered one at that. He founded the BSU, and helped usher in the standardization of profiling as a primary investigative tool. He has medals and awards, recognition and respect. Sometimes, it’s a good thing to leave at the top of your game. 

He’d spent about six months in that frame of mind. Then he got tired of Florida in the summer when the humidity was thick enough to taste, and he couldn’t raise a finger without sweating. He got tired of the crash of the ocean waves, the palm trees against crisp blue skies, the lazy and unhurried pace at which his fully retired neighbors carried themselves - all from the safe corner of his front porch so alike the others lining his street. He got tired of the nothingness, the boring repetition of days turning into nights and back again, plodding forward with little excitement or meaning. 

A deep-rooted restlessness called him to action, and the action he chose turned out to be somewhat prosaic. Wendy asked him if he hadn’t had enough of research and travel for cold cases. He’d simply shrugged, well aware of his own wariness of this particular line of work that he’d carried for years, a perhaps self-absorption that made him question why anyone would pay a civilian to poke around in their business when the police are perfectly capable - if not better equipped - to handle such matters. 

Five years later, however, with his FBI badge exchanged for his private investigator’s license, he’s had the opportunity to view and investigate over fifty cases outside the realm of law enforcement, mostly cold files of missing persons. He’s even solved a few, but the new perspective has led him to discover that the most important part of his job has always been about honoring the victims, and giving their family’s closure. Even if he doesn’t always crack the cold case, he knows the families, who have been left with questions and little comfort for years, appreciate his dedication; sometimes, it’s a lot more than what they got from the police officers who investigated their loved ones’ case. 

As the plane descends into Miami, the sky is pink and purple with sunset. The cantankerous old man inside him complains that he’s getting too old for this shit, but it’s always the same debate between his tired bones and his conscience. People depend on him. He’ll rest when he’s dead. 

The passengers ahead of him seem to take forever to gather their luggage and step off the plane. He takes his time standing and stretching, wincing at the stiffness that translates into a dull ache down the middle of his back. Grabbing his briefcase and carry-on, he shuffles into the aisle behind a woman wrangling her two small children. 

Once he retrieves his suitcase from baggage claim, he heads for the exit toward long-term parking. On his way, he notices newspaper displays below the window, the blaring block lettering awash in the golden light of the dying sunset. 

Today is February 26th, 2005. The headline is succinct yet momentous: 

**BTK ARRESTED**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Bill doesn’t go straight to the 24-hour photo shop as he had planned. He purchases three different newspapers reporting on the arrest of one Dennis Rader of Park City, Kansas, a compliance officer and a prominent leader in his Lutheran church. 

Once home, he sits at the kitchen table to consume each article. There aren’t many details as the story only broke in the late morning, giving the editors just enough time to rush the story into the evening papers. From what Bill can gather, Rader had been identified as BTK using a combination of sneaky police work via correspondence with Rader and DNA matching as well as witness testimony to the fact that his car had been seen at the drop site of one of his famous letters; but bottom line, what had really gotten BTK caught was hubris plain and simple. After years of avoiding capture and laying low, he’d been unable to resist the urge to reach out to the police and media again to pontificate about his crimes and his plans to commit more murders.

Bill scans each article three times before leaning back in the chair, and gazing blankly around the fixtures of his kitchen. His chest throbs, a mix of relief and shock. After three decades of searching and wondering, BTK’s true face is revealed; and it is a banal face, an ordinary face, a face which he has passed in the supermarket hundreds of times. He is a man, nothing more than a sick and twisted individual who got away with it thanks to a bit of careful planning and sheer luck. 

He thinks he should call someone. Tell them. But he knows Wendy is in Europe right now, and it’s too late in that time zone to pester her with news that can wait until the morning. Brian is averse to his father’s line of work after his own youthful brush with death, and his wife, Jessica, is likely in the midst of putting their daughter, Mallory, to bed. 

There’s only one person in the world who cares as much about Dennis Rader being captured as he does. One person who he could pick up the phone and call if only he had the stones. 

Instead, Bill phones the local pizza joint to request delivery of a large pie with cheese, pepperoni, sausage, and ham. Sinking onto the couch, he doesn’t bother to turn the lights on. The television plays through the news stations, projecting flashes of color and light across the walls of the living room in an endless reel of the BTK arrest. They keep emphasizing with horror that Rader was the president of the church counsel. A Christian. A so-called believer. 

Bill’s initial profile was wrong. He’d been convinced that such a man could not parade himself as normal, adjusted, and spiritual in his real life. He isn’t personally frustrated by that oversight as profiles are never perfectly accurate, but he does close his exhausted, aching eyes over the thought that it’s just another mistake that Holden might hold against him. One of many.

**.**

**.**

**.**

The next day, Bill rises early, makes a quick breakfast, and watches the morning news cycle for fresh information on Rader. There isn’t a lot more aside from distant shots of the caution tape surrounding Rader’s home, and the police coming in and out of the house with evidence in boxes and bags. Neighbors and fellow church members are interviewed, but most of it is just speculation. 

Bill turns the television off quickly, and goes out onto the porch to drink his morning coffee. He wishes momentarily that he had a cigarette. Reminding himself why he quit, he settles for drumming his fingers on the arm of his patio chair. 

He’s filled with a sense of relief, but also anxiety at the thought of Rader possibly dragging his capture into a trial that’s bound to be extremely painful for the families of the victims. If the evidence is as concrete as the news is making it out to be, the man should be quickly sentenced, and save everyone the financial and emotional expense of court proceedings. 

But he knows Rader. He knows BTK. His relationship to this killer has lasted longer than most of the important, intimate relationships in his life. Thirty years. He’s studied every angle of these crimes, and he knows the person behind them is an unfeeling psychopath and narcissist. What he’ll do next to earn himself more notoriety is still in question. 

After his coffee, Bill takes his Nikon camera to the print shop. Because it isn’t the night shift, his favorite girl Julia isn’t behind the counter. The kid who’s tending the shop is a pimply-faced, greasy-haired teen who looks like he hasn’t bathed in a week. He’s also a bit too curious about Bill’s pictures from California.

“You police?” He asks as he hands over the packet of prints. 

“Nope,” Bill says, motioning to his belt devoid of a badge. 

“Private investigator then?”

“I’m a little busy today. How much will all these prints cost me?” Bill asks, impatiently. 

“Thirty bucks.”

Bill hands over the cash, and notices the kid eyeing him carefully. He’s getting used to people thinking he’s fucking Tom Selleck with fast cars and a knack for cracking the case at the end of every forty-five minute episode, but this morning he’s a little testy. 

“You know, I am a PI, but it’s not as glamorous as you might think,” He says, accepting his change from the kid. “There’s no car chases or pretty women in every case. I don’t even solve every case - not by half. These pictures, here - they’re photographs of the ex-boyfriend of a woman who's been missing since 1992. Now I just paid you thirty dollars for a bunch of pictures that I spent all of Thursday night taking of this guy hanging out at the country club with his buddies and his new girlfriend, and they may not get me shit. I’m not the police, and I can’t arrest people. Even if I did prove he did it, there might not be anything I can do. I can hand it over to the cops and let them deal with him, but that’s about it. It’s a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, sometimes for nothing. The men and women who busted the BTK killer up in Kansas the other day - those are the real heroes.”

The kid purses his lips, and frowns. He looks confused. Then he shrugs. “Well, good luck with all that.”

He walks away to stock shelves, and Bill stews for a moment before snatching his prints and marching out the door. 

He figures he needs to clear his mind before trying to tackle the pictures or his verbal notes so he drops the prints at home in exchange for his clubs, and drives out to the Briar Bay golf course. Eighteen holes sprawl across the verdant green sparkling beneath the mild Floridian winter sun of no less than a comfortable seventy degrees and offering a secluded escape from the rest of the world. 

He lingers through each fairway, taking his time driving and putting, lining up each shot with careful concentration. Focusing on the angle and degree between the hole and the ball frees the rest of his mind to process information more clearly and without bias. 

He thinks about the case in California. The victim, Maureen Parker, has been missing for thirteen years, and her two-timing boyfriend more than likely killed her. He thinks about the rumors that she was pregnant and dependent on her boyfriend for finances, about the family testimony that they had never gotten along with the self-absorbed, hedge-fund manager whom she’d fallen for over the course of one summer weekend in Montego Bay. But mostly he thinks about Dennis Rader and BTK, the faces of the Otero family, Kevin Bright who had fled Kansas in fear of his life, and all the other victims who had been slain for the killer’s sick fantasies. 

Inevitably, he must think about Holden, too, and all the conversations they’d had tweaking the BTK profile long after the cases had gone cold, the killer inactive. He must think of him not just beneath the garish, paneled light of the BSU basement in his pressed suit and ties, but also reclined in hotel bedsheets, his hair awry from energetic sex, and his eyes bright in dim lamplight, both of them far from home and thinking little of the consequences. 

Now that a decade has passed since their last romantic blunder, all of the hurt feelings pushed far beneath the surface, their lives diverging into separate paths, and only this echo of history - the horribly unpredicted yet simple Dennis Rader - resurrecting the thoughts in his mind, Bill can’t help but think of him. 

He finishes the last hole on par, but only by rote. Mildly frustrated by his own sudden preoccupation with the past and sweating beneath the sun, he packs up his clubs and drives home. 

The streets of Miami are oversaturated in the sunlight and milling with the weekend droves of young people traveling from shops to beaches and back again. He navigates through the thick of it until reaching his cozy suburb where streets wind back into private cul-de-sacs, and the elderly folks who live here have the decency not to run lawn mowers on the weekend. 

He recognizes all of the faces on the front porches, and the sleek Porches and Corvettes parked in drives. He doesn’t recognize the dark blue sedan parked in front of his own house. For a moment, he doesn’t recognize the man leaning against it either, but as he pulls in beside the unfamiliar car, his pulse bolts and his belly knots with a strange mix of anticipation and dread. 

Slowly, he extracts his key from the ignition, and unlatches the door. Climbing out, he looks over the roof of his car at his unexpected guest dressed in a white and blue striped button-down shirt, khakis, and patent leather loafers, one toe crossed over the insole of the other. 

Holden takes off his tortoiseshell Ray-Ban sunglasses. “Hi, Bill.”

Bill swallows hard, squinting against the harsh sunlight. “Hey.”

Holden gazes at him quietly for a long moment, but it’s barely enough time for Bill to process that he’s really here. He looks older now that he’s pushed beyond the fifty-five mark. Silver streaks from his temples, overtaking dark brown hair that’s still generously thick, but the lines around his eyes indicate the rough passage of years in a trying line of work. Unlike Bill, he’s obviously tried hard to maintain his physique, defying pudgy softness of middle age with toned arms and moderate waistline. 

_ Jesus, he looks good. Better than he has any right to.  _ Bill thinks, but quickly shoves the sting of appreciation and jealousy to the back of his mind. 

Shoving the door shut, he circles around the car to where Holden is waiting. 

“This is a long way from Sacramento,” he says. 

Holden nods. “Yep.”

“You wanna come in?”

Holden nods again. 

Bill drags his golf clubs from the trunk, and bustles past Holden on his way to the front door. When he glances over his shoulder, Holden is ducking into his car to pull a six-pack of beer from the passenger’s seat. He follows Bill into the house once Bill manages to get his trembling fingers to wield the house key into the lock. 

“Come on in. You can have a seat,” Bill says, motioning to the couch. 

“Thanks,” Holden murmurs, scanning the interior with open curiosity. 

Bill takes his clubs into the study where he pauses a moment to breathe and gather himself. He should probably find it more strange that Holden had shown up here after he’d spent all evening and morning trying hard not to think of him, but he knows that if anything would bring them back together, it would be BTK. Holden must have gotten on the first flight this morning. 

When Bill comes back into the living room, Holden has the six-pack on the coffee table, but he isn’t sitting down. He’s walking around the circumference of the room, inspecting the photographs of Bill’s family on the walls, the books on the shelves ranging from true crime to investigative manuals to encyclopedias, and the house plants clinging to life in the corner. Taking apart Bill’s life to dissect its pieces in his typical manner. Nosy and vexingly intuitive in exactly the way Bill recalls. 

“Is that Mallory?” He asks, pointing to a photograph of Bill’s granddaughter stranding tall and grinning in her girl scout’s uniform. 

“Yeah.”

“She’s gotten so tall.”

“She’s eleven now. Growing like a weed.”

“Look at all those badges. You must be proud.”

“I am.” 

Hands tucked casually in his pockets, Holden turns on his heel from the picture of Mallory to meet Bill’s skeptical stare. 

“This place is really nice. Florida suits you. Just like I thought it would.”

“You thought that, huh?”

A beat of hesitation. “Yes. With all of the golf courses, you know …”

Bill licks his lips, chest fluttering with nerves. It’s difficult to remember that this is Holden - the same Holden he’s known for twenty-eight years - with the chasm of five years absence between them. 

“You look good yourself,” he says, finally, hating how contrived it sounds. 

“Thank you.”

“How’s Pam? The kids?”

“Good, they’re good,” Holden says, a mite too cheery.

“God, Vanessa is what? Eighteen now?”

“Nineteen, actually. She's a sophomore in college.”

“That must mean Nicky is …”

“Seventeen. Graduating next year.” 

“Christ,” Bill mutters, looking down at the carpet. “Time flies.”

“You’re not kidding.”

Silence elapses between them now that pleasantries are out of the way.

Holden lets it go on for another moment before clearing his throat. “I’m sure you saw the news. Everyone has.”

“Yep.” Bill nods. “You’re not going to believe this, but I was getting off a flight from California last night. I hadn’t turned on the news all day, and I saw the papers as I was leaving the airport.”

“You were in California?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Oh,” Holden says, lifting his chin. “I’m sure you were busy with a case.”

Bill hears what he means.  _ Too busy for a side trip to Sacramento.  _

“I was. But as soon as I got home, I turned on the television. I could hardly believe my eyes.”

“Me either. As soon as I was able to finally put a face to the name, I knew … I felt that I-”

Bill frowns as Holden’s comment flounders. His palms are sweaty at his sides, but his feet feel bolted to the carpet watching Holden turn in a tight circle and move towards him. Slowly, out of the blinding sunlight that plagued him on first arrival, his face is close and clear, the complexion still smooth despite the age and lines, his eyes that resplendent blue that haven’t dulled in the five years since they last saw each other. 

“I knew I had to come here,” Holden says, quietly, stopping two feet from Bill. “You were the only person I could think of that I wanted to celebrate this moment with.”

“Celebrate?”

“Yes. Isn’t it worth celebrating?”

Bill chuckles, grimly. “Sure. Locking up that asshole twenty years after he should have been caught to begin with seems like something I want to celebrate.”

Holden’s tongue clicks. “Why do you always have to be so negative?”

“I’m not. It’s the truth.”

“Yes, maybe he should have been caught a long time ago, but it’s over now. Isn’t that something …?” Holden trails off, then presses his forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose with a low hiss. “Fuck me.”

Bill glances away, biting his lower lip. 

“I’m sorry,” Holden says, raising a helpless hand. “I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to come here. This must be so out-of-the-blue for you.”

Bill doesn’t say anything. He should apologize. More than that, he should tell Holden that despite what he'd once convinced himself of he  _ does  _ want Holden here, but he’s too old and tired for desperation or wheedling. Too aged for betting on a slim chance or living a moment of glory that’s meant for youth. 

“I didn’t mean to be an inconvenience,” Holden adds, at length. “I bought that plane ticket without thinking. I’ll go.”

He turns to leave, and Bill almost stays silent. Clinging to his pride, for all the good that’s done him over the years. 

Holden pulls the front door open. He has his foot on the threshold. 

“Holden.”

He pauses, head lowered. Turning, he meets Bill’s tentative, hopeful gaze. 

“You expect me to drink that whole six-pack by myself?” Bill asks, mustering a faint laugh. 

“I don’t know …” Holden says, his mouth quivering with a budding smile. “Not if you’re really admitting that you’ve gotten too old to handle a few Bud Lights on your own.”

“Oh, I can handle it. But a drinking buddy might be nice every once in a while.”

Holden glowers sheepishly, and shuffles back across the room. “Are you asking me to stay?”

Bill draws in a quick, deep breath. “Yes. Stay the night if you like. My guest bedroom is open.”

Holden gazes up at him with unnerving candor for several seconds, his eyes alight with blatant joy, relief, and curiosity. Then he grabs the six-pack from the coffee table, and nods his head. 

“How about we sit outside? It’s a nice day.”

“Sure,” Bill agrees, waving a hand for Holden to lead the way. 

They go out onto the porch where the wicker patio furniture is padded with blue tartan cushions. Holden sits in the chair while Bill occupies the loveseat. Positioning the six-pack on the side table between them, Holden cracks two bottles open and offers one to Bill. 

Bill takes a swig, and leans back in the seat. Tries not to make a show of studying Holden’s profile melted in the warm, yellow glow of midday. 

“Dennis Rader,” Holden says, quietly, testing the name in his mouth. 

“Yep.”

“He was a leader in his church.” 

“Yep.”

“Church. For God’s sakes. We didn’t see that one coming.”

“ _ I _ didn’t.”

Holden squints at him. “No, I guess not.”

“I didn’t think it would be 2005 before we caught him either.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I know how you’ve always felt about this case,” Holden says, gesturing with his beer loosely held in his fingers. “You can relax now. Let it go.”

“Yeah. And?”

“I don’t know. Retire for real, maybe.”

Bill scoffs. “BTK doesn’t have anything to do with my PI work.”

“Doesn’t it? I always got the sense that you felt tied to the work - that it was unfinished. Some cases stick with us. BTK was yours.”

“You profiling me?”

“Analyzing. Big difference.”

“Not really.”

“Well, are you?”

“What, retiring? I doubt it.”

Holden takes a slow drink of his beer, and watches Bill carefully. “Doesn’t it get exhausting? You’re fifteen years older than me, and I know I couldn’t do what you do.”

“Couldn’t or don’t want to?”

Holden lifts his chin, and gazes momentarily at the porch overhang. A mildly irritated breath slips past his flared nostrils. “Okay, let’s talk about it.”

Bill stays quiet. He doesn’t appreciate being goaded, but Holden already knows that. Nothing changes, not even in five years.

“Come on, I know you’re thinking it,” Holden says, snapping a gaze to him.

“Why rehash it? It’s been years, Holden. We’ve both said our piece, and I don’t think we’re going to ever agree so …”

“Did you at least read the copy I sent you?”

Bill’s gaze cuts away. He had read part of it. Just past the dedication:  _ To Bill. My partner, my best friend.  _

“Really?” Holden asks, softly. “Okay. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked given your … visceral reaction when I told you I was going to write it.”

“Then why are you?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought that you’ve had five years to think about it, and realize what an asshole you were.”

Bill casts him a scowl and a derisive chuckle. “ _ I’m  _ the asshole?”

“My own behavior wasn’t exactly mature, but at least I can admit it. You’re still sitting here as if fucking off to Florida and sneaking around with a camera every once in awhile is the most respectable thing you could do with your retirement.”

“Sneaking around with a camera?” Bill echoes, disbelief draining into the rising pitch of his voice. “That’s how you view my work, Holden? Really? Helping families try to get answers that the police never could is sneaking around with a camera?”

Holden’s mouth purses shut. His cheeks flush pink with embarrassment, but he doesn’t offer a defense.

Bill rises to his feet. “If that’s how you feel then you can go back to Sacramento. Forget all about the guest bedroom.”

Holden jumps up as Bill pulls the screen door open. 

“Bill, wait. I’m sorry.” He says, tone oozing with meek sincerity. 

Bill pauses, clenching his jaw and closing his eyes. He tries to breathe steadily. This is why they haven’t seen each other for five years. They disagree, they fight, Holden ropes him back in again so they can start the whole ugly cycle over again. He wishes he could get over that - loving Holden too much for his own good - but the absence hasn’t dampened those emotions; in fact, they’re only intensified like a dozen kitchen knives placed deliberately between each rib. Placed there by Holden, slowly impaling him as each year passed. 

“I didn’t mean that,” Holden says, quietly. “I respect what you do. I just wish that feeling was mutual.”

“How can I respect you writing about our work the way you do? Sensationalizing it for the general public and encouraging people’s sick fascination with the men we used to try to bring to justice?” Bill asks, letting the screen door snap shut as he turns to face Holden once again. 

“It isn’t sensationalizing it. You would know that if you read the book.”

Bill sighs, heavily. He has to admit, Holden has a point.

“I’ve been back to the Academy a few times,” Holden adds. “As a guest speaker. Do you know how many of the students walked up to me and told me that they wanted to join the BSU because of my book? How many of them said they were inspired to look for justice the way we used to because of our story?”

“Plenty, I’m sure.”

“That’s right. Dozens. That doesn’t include the people who have written me letters or emails, and the families who thanked me for shedding light on their cases and treating the victims with respect. For always putting the victims first.”

Bill lowers his chin. He’s thinking now he should have just swallowed his pride and read the damn book. Too bad he’s never been good at choking down bitter pills, and now it’s too late to fix what happened to them. 

He can at least prove that he isn’t the asshole Holden remembers from five years ago.

“Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?” He asks, “My treat.”

Holden blinks in surprise, but nods. “Yeah. Sounds great.”

“Okay, good,” Bill says, walking back over to the loveseat. He sits down and takes a drink of his beer. “Now I’m sure you have some pictures of the kids.”

“I do,” Holden says, smiling softly. 

Bill nods for Holden to show him, and he hastily pulls his wallet out of his pocket and flips it open to the photographs of his two children, Vanessa and Nicky.

For a long time, they had referred to him as Uncle Bill. He watched them grow up. Attended all their birthday parties, took them out for pizza. Pretending all the while that his relationship with their dad was nothing more than friendship or partnership. He and Holden are incredibly lucky the truth had never once come out. A decade later, Holden is still married, his kids grown and well-adjusted with the perfect parents ushering them into adulthood.

  
  


* * *

  
  


**1988**

**17 years ago**

**Stafford, Virginia**

  
  


Bill parks his Plymouth in the driveway of the Ford home unlike the rest of the party guests who had been relegated to street parking along the wide, residential lane of quiet, cooker-cutter homes in this section of upper middle class neighborhood. 

The drive from Fredericksburg where he resides to here in Stafford was far too brief. He wishes for more time. Always more time when it comes to Holden. In this instance, he’d wished for more time apart just so that he could sort out his emotions and regulate his blood pressure. 

Casting a sharp glance at the front of the traditional, Colonial style home where the front door is decorated with a festive, red-white-and-blue ribboned wreath, he takes another hard drag of his dwindling cigarette and lets the nicotine diffuse into his lungs. He’s been here several times since Holden and Pam moved two years ago, shortly after the birth of their daughter, Vanessa for the house warming, an occasional dinner party, and group events like this one, July Fourth weekend where the tension will be cushioned by their friends and co-workers. He still doesn’t feel prepared in the slightest. 

Grabbing the six pack of Holden’s favorite beer brand, Schlitz, from the passenger’s seat, Bill ignores the dread in the pit of his stomach and gets out of the car. He pitches his cigarette to the ground on his way up the pristine, cement driveway and sidewalk to the porch. Before he can get there, the door swings open. 

“Hi!” Pam waves cheerfully from the doorway where she balances Vanessa on her hip. She’s dressed casually in a white skirt with brown buttons lining the front and an America themed top with a decorative bow at the scoop neckline to show off her graceful neck. Her blond hair is blown out in the typical Farrah Fawcett look, always perfect despite her duties as hostess and mother to a squirming toddler. 

“Hi, Pam,” Bill greets her as he reaches the porch. 

Vanessa babbles, and reaches out small, fat fingers toward him. 

“Say ‘hi, Uncle Bill,’” Pam urges, hoisting Vanessa from her hip and toward Bill without hesitation. 

Bill instinctively reaches to take the baby despite the protest roaring in his mind. 

“Here, I’ll take that,” Pam says, brightly, snatching the beer from his other hand. “Come on in. Holden’s out back with the grill. I’m sure he could use your help.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Bill enters the house, sparing only a quick glance around the clean furnishings before Vanessa steals his attention by planting her little hand over his chin. 

“Hey there, darling,” he mutters, bouncing her slightly in his arms. 

She gazes up at him with wide, cornflower blue eyes. Most babies are born that way, blue-eyed and innocent, but the color is nearly identical to her father’s. They’re bound to stay that shade of fading night sky for the rest of her life. 

“I’ll stop torturing you,” Pam says, chuckling. She holds her hands out to Vanessa. “Come here, sweetie.”

Bill hands the baby back to her mother, relieved at the sudden lack of weight in his arms. It’s easy enough not to think of Pam and Vanessa when he and Holden are traveling for work, sequestered in bland hotel rooms across the country, but in the house they share, the guilt is like a tiger lurking in the corner just behind him, ready to pounce. 

Ignoring the shriek of alarm bells in the back of his mind, Bill scans the house. The kitchen island is covered by plates of h'orderves and the counter beside the sink hosts an array of drinking options and a bowl of ice. The living room is occupied by friends of Pam that Bill recognizes from other parties but doesn’t personally know. 

“This place looks really nice,” he remarks. 

“We just finished redoing the kitchen,” Pam says. “Bathroom’s next.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“Oh, only a little. You know Holden. He likes to do everything himself. He only hired a few people to help him with the electrical work.”

“I don’t know where he finds the time.”

“Me either. He makes it sound like you two are really busy.”

“We are.”

“That’s all he tells me,” Pam adds, her tone sobering. She sways with Vanessa, but her gaze stays fixed on him, searching for hints. 

He doesn’t give her any. 

“You said out back?” He asks, jabbing a thumb toward the patio door. 

“Yeah, go right ahead.”

Muttering a thanks, he strides past her, cutting through the kitchen to the door where the back patio is crowded with folks chatting and playing cornhole, and the air is thick and smoky with charcoal. 

Holden is standing over the grill in a white polo and khakis, intently monitoring the burgers and hotdogs slowly blackening over the open flame. 

Bill pauses to draw in a deep breath before approaching. 

“That one’s just about done,” he says in lieu of greeting, jabbing a finger at one of the burgers getting a little too charred at the edges. 

“Oh, hey,” Holden says, looking up sharply from the grill. His cheeks are flushed, maybe from the fire. 

Bill grabs a plate, and holds it over so that Holden can transfer the burger quickly from the grill. 

“Thanks,” Holden mutters, his gaze dipping away again. “I’m not exactly the expert here.”

“Want me to take over?”

“Bill, this is my house. My grill. Are you asking me to emasculate myself in front of all of our co-workers and friends?”

Bill chuckles, but holds up his hands. “Suit yourself. I brought you some beer, but Pam took it from me as soon as I walked in the door.”

“Schlitz? I hope she put it somewhere safe.”

“You know nobody else drinks that stuff, right?”

Holden casts him a tart gaze. “Just shut up and help me with this.”

“I thought you didn’t want my help.”

“Just make it look like I know what I’m doing.”

“Fine,” Bill says. 

He reaches over to direct the spatula in Holden’s hand toward the next charring burger, but Holden turns in the same instant. Bill’s hand touches the back of Holden’s. Holden yanks his hand away, accidentally touching the lower portion of his palm against the fiery hot grill. 

“Shit!” Holden shouts, dropping the spatula to the ground in favor of clutching his smarting hand. 

“Fuck, what are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Holden retorts, casting Bill a cutting glare shimmering with pained moisture. “You … you-”

“I what?” Bill demands. “I barely touched you!”

They both come to a stop, breathing hard as they realize most of the party guests are staring at them. 

“Shit, come on,” Bill says, grabbing Holden by the elbow. “Can someone please watch this grill?”

“I got it,” Gregg pipes up. He sets aside his cup of punch to come assist. 

Holden’s glare is wilted with disgust as Bill leads him back toward the house. 

“Where are we going?” he hisses. 

“To run some cold water over that,” Bill says, tightening his grip on Holden’s elbow. “Got any burn cream?”

“I have a full first aid kit in the bathroom.”

“Good, we’ll put it to use.”

As they come back through the kitchen, Pam looks up from where she’s watching Vanesa play with a friend’s toddler. 

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“Mr. Grill Master here burned his hand,” Bill says. 

Holden clutches his hand, but makes a show of appearing nonplussed. “It’s fine. Bill is gonna patch me up. It’s not a big deal.”

“Are you sure?” Pam asks. 

“Yes, please.”

Before she can protest further, Bill leads Holden down the hallway to the bathroom. He pushes the door shut behind them. 

“Where’s the kit?”

“Under the sink,” Holden whispers, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes against the burning pain. 

Bill pulls the kit out, and sets it on the counter so that he can rifle through the contents. He locates the burn cream. 

“Come here, put it under some cold water first,” Bill says, cranking on the faucet. 

Holden trudges to the sink, and puts his hand under the water. The heel of his hand is bright red where he’d touched the grill, and he flinches at the first cold splash. 

Bill studies his terse profile, trying to read between the lines of his reticence and guarded responses. It’s been like this all week, ever since they got back from a three-week long consult in Chicago. He’d felt pretty good after the trip. They had a lot of private time together, plenty of good sex. Holden expressed a desire to leave behind his stifling family life, and Bill thought maybe this was a turning point. Now he’s not sure. 

Holden’s gaze drifts from the water cascading over his injured palm to the mirror over the sink. 

Bill can feel his gaze burning through the reflection, and he turns his own stare to it. They’re hovering over the sink and Holden’s wound. Bill’s hand is at his lower back, his chest almost touching Holden’s shoulder. Any closer and it would be an embrace. 

“What’s going on with you?” Bill asks their reflection. 

Holden blinks. Swallows. His eyes shy away. 

“You’ve been acting weird ever since we got back, and don’t try to tell me you haven’t.”

Holden pulls his hand out from beneath the water, and reaches past Bill to grab the towel. He dries the burned area off gently. 

“I have a lot on my mind,” he says, softly. 

“Usually when that happens, I can’t get you to shut up.”

Holden’s mouth barely puckers with a smile. Secretly, he likes it when Bill teases him, but this response is more of a concerted yet failed effort. 

“Hey, look at me,” Bill says, reaching up to carefully cradle Holden’s cheek. 

Holden presses his eyes shut. He doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn’t pull away violently like he had by the grill either. 

“Come on, you know you can talk to me,” Bill urges. 

Holden draws in a slow breath past flared nostrils, and hesitantly opens his eyes. The corners glisten. 

“When we got back, I … Pam, she-”

Bill’s stomach twists.

Holden’s brow wrinkles as he fights back tears. “Bill, I’m sorry. She’s … we’re going to have another baby.”

Bill lets go of Holden’s cheek, and takes a staggered step back. A dull buzz builds in his ears. His hopes crumbling, his faith washing away. 

“Was it an accident?” Bill asks, his voice trembling.

Holden swallows, thickly. “No. I was …  _ We  _ were trying.”

Bill draws in a shaky breath, feeling a sudden surge of rage. 

“Why?” he bites out, casting Holden a cutting glare. “Why would you do that?”

Holden’s eyes dart away. 

“No, look me in the eye,” Bill snaps, jabbing a finger at him. “Damnit, Holden, look at me right now and tell me the fucking truth.”

Holden’s mouth quivers, but he refuses to submit to tears as he obeys, turning a shimmering gaze back to Bill. 

“She’s my wife. This is my family.”

“So what about Chicago?” Bill demands. “Huh? What about all those things you were saying the other week about how you wanted out, how you wished we could be together? Was that all a fucking lie?”

“No, it wasn’t-”

“Then explain to me how you could sit there and say those things when you already knew you were trying to get pregnant again.”

“I don’t know, I just … I-I got swept away in the moment. I didn’t mean to-”

“Didn’t mean to what? Make me think I finally had a chance with you?”

Silence descends. In the hollowness, Bill can hear the rush of his blood in his ears like a great tide rolling in to pull him under. His hands are shaking fists at his sides, and he wants to use them on Holden. He wants to break his sweet, tender mouth open under his knuckles, wants to make him bleed the way Bill is bleeding for him right now from the inside, from his gut, his heart. 

“I’m sorry,” Holden whispers, “That’s all I can say. I’m so sorry, Bill.”

“You’re not fucking sorry.”

“I am,” Holden presses, reaching for Bill’s hand. 

Bill slaps the gesture away, and takes another step back to enforce the distance between them. 

“I do love you,” Holden murmurs, wiping hurriedly at the corner of his eyes. “You may not believe that, but I do.”

“What do you want me to do with that, huh? Is that supposed to be some kind of consolation prize? I don’t get to be with you, but at least I get the gift of your ‘love’.”

“No.” 

“Then why are you telling me?”

“Because, I wish I could change things. But I can’t.”

“You could change anything you want. You could have chosen to not have this pregnancy, or the one before it. You could have chosen not to marry Pam.”

Holden lowers his head. “I could have chosen not to ever sleep with you. But I did. Trust me, I’m well aware of my mistakes.”

“Oh, so now I’m a mistake?”

“What would you call it?” Holden asks, sharply, his eyes suddenly cold and cruel. “I don’t know how you thought we were going to end, but I know you - you’re a realist, a pessimist. You don’t believe in happy endings. So stop pretending like you do.”

Bill stands still, heart crushing against his ribs, air stolen from his lungs as Holden grabs the small tube of burn cream and a bandaid, and shoulders his way out of the bathroom. 

Bill breathes hard. He looks up at the mirror, at the sad reflection of the man he’s become, and hates how right Holden’s statement is. He’s not the kind of person to allow himself to be led on. He doesn’t let people in. He doesn’t fall in love - he’d stopped believing in that kind of connection after Nancy. Only Holden had made him believe again, and he’d been foolish enough to let it happen. 

After he manages to calm down, he comes out of the bathroom to find that the grilling is done thanks to Gregg. Everyone is sitting down to eat. 

He wants to leave, but he knows he can’t. Just as he’s done for the past five years, he sits down with everyone else, and pretends that nothing is wrong. He pretends that he and Holden are just two good friends. Then he tells himself that he’ll get over it eventually. If he pushes it down hard enough and believes it long enough, he’ll find a way to get over Holden.


	2. pills & bad cocktails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 1992, a case in Salt Lake City tests Holden's mental wellbeing and the rocky boundaries of his and Bill's relationship.

Holden hadn’t expected Bill to take him anywhere fancy or high class for dinner, but he is pleasantly charmed by the little beachside seafood joint simply named The Pier, rightfully so as it’s perched on its own wooden stilts out over the clear, blue water. A wrap-around deck allows for outdoor dining which Bill requests. 

Seated facing the incoming ocean tide, they scarcely converse about anything other than the menu items for the first fifteen minutes after their arrival. Holden carefully peeks over the plastic edge to watch Bill study the choices. 

The last five years have been kind to him, kinder than he’d probably admit. Though he’s gained more wrinkles and weight with age, he doesn’t look as bone-weary as Holden recalls prior to retirement. He’s obviously getting some sun on his skin and the right amount of rest, and maintaining a balance between work and relaxation that hadn’t existed for thirty-five years with the FBI. 

A bitter voice in the back of Holden’s mind reminds him that those last five years have been absent of his presence as well, and maybe he’d been part of what was making Bill so tired and bitter.

After they both put in their orders, the waitress gathers up the menus, leaving them without a barrier between them save for the narrow, two-person table. 

Bill looks out at the water. He hasn’t given up on the flattop, but it’s almost white now. Something else is missing. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen you smoke at all since I got here,” Holden says. 

“Nope,” Bill replies, shifting his gaze back to Holden. There’s a sliver of triumph in his gray-blue eyes. 

“You quit?” 

“Yep.”

“Well, I’m … shocked,” Holden says, raising his eyebrows. “I never thought that I’d see it. What made you decide?”

“Well, my doctor told me that if I wanted to live to see my granddaughter graduate and get married, I should probably kick it sooner rather than later.”

“Christ. That’s grim.”

“I appreciate it when people are straightforward with me.”

Holden shifts uncomfortably beneath Bill’s needling stare. 

Clearing his throat, Bill continues, “So, yeah, I did it for Mallory. If I’d done it for any other reason, I would have started again already.”

“Does she know that?”

“Yep. She’s only eleven, but she’s a firecracker. When she calls me up on the phone, she asks about it. Keeps me in line.”

“That’s great.” 

“Yeah, she’s a good kid.”

The waitress stops by again to drop off the beers they ordered, and lets them know the food is on the way. Bill thanks her, addressing her by name. Charlotte. She isn’t wearing a name tag.

“You come here often?” Holden asks. 

“Every week if I can. Sometimes I’m out of town.”

“Sounds like you’ve been keeping busy.”

“Yep.”

Holden takes a sip of his beer, trying to work down the anxious knot in his throat. He knows Bill has every right to be guarded, to even pretend like nothing’s wrong so that they don’t start a public argument; but he wishes it wasn’t this way between them. It wasn’t always like this, but it’s his fault that it is now. 

“How about a toast?” Holden asks. 

“Toast?”

“To the men and women of the Wichita Police Department.”

“Sure,” Bill agrees, picking up his glass. 

They clink rims, and Holden takes only a brief sip before watching Bill drink generously. He sighs when he sets the glass, half empty, down again. 

“It is a relief,” he admits, still avoiding Holden’s gaze by watching the tide. “But it’s strange now to put that face to the name. I’ve spent so many years imagining who it could be, what he would look like. It’s almost like he’d become a figment of my imagination.”

“You’re not satisfied with who he turned out to be.”

“Doesn’t have anything to do with my satisfaction. I’m just realizing how many of my thoughts and hours of my consideration that man stakes a claim to.”

Holden nods.  _ And what about me? How much of that real estate do I own? How much of it have I stolen over the years?  _

“Some things can’t be forgotten, no matter how many years have passed,” he murmurs. 

Bill slips a glance to him. “And no matter how much you might want to.”

Holden looks at his lap, searching for gumption. “Bill, I-”

At this moment, Charlotte returns again with a large tray balanced up on her shoulder. 

Bill’s gaze only clings curiously to him for a moment before he accepts the plate overflowing with breaded and baked fish and thick-cut french fries from the waitress. He picks up his fork and knife as she leaves, and motions for Holden to dig in. 

“Now, tell me if this isn’t the best red snapper you’ve ever tasted,” he challenges.

Holden smiles, and takes a bite. He has to admit, it is good. And the moment to find his honesty is passed like the wind. Instead, he says, “So, what took you to California?”

“Work,” Bill says. “I’m helping some folks look into their daughter, Maureen's disappearance in 1992. She was engaged to a wealthy hedge-fund manager named Greg Merritt. That’s who I was following on my trip. It could be that he killed her.”

“Sounds like something off of Magnum P.I.,” Holden says, just to get a rise. 

He’s quickly rewarded by a sneer and a grumble. “If only this line of work was actually that fucking easy.” 

“What do you think happened to her?” Holden asks. 

“Well, her parents are convinced that Greg had something to do with it. It was the anniversary of her death this week so I thought I’d go out there and see what he was up to, try to talk to him. He wasn’t interested, but he still goes to the country club they used to vacation at. Doesn’t seem to bother him.”

“Suspicious.”

“Could be. It was thirteen years ago. Maybe he’s just moved on.”

“That easily?”

“No, it’s never that easy, but people find ways to cope.”

They share a long gaze. 

Bill clears his throat, and diverts the conversation in another direction. “So, how are you and Pam liking it out in Sacramento?”

“We love it.”

“Long way from Quantico.”

“That’s what I wanted; I was lucky she agreed to go along with it.”

“You couldn’t have picked a better place,” Bill says. “While I was out there, I wondered if I shouldn’t have gone to California instead of Florida.”

“What? And be in the same state as me?”

Bill casts him a stern gaze, but he doesn’t take the bait. Scooping another bite of snapper into his mouth, he washes it down with a drink of beer. 

“To tell the truth, I almost couldn’t believe it when you wrote that you were retiring,” Bill says, shaking his head. 

“Well, I wasn’t going to wait for them to push me out like they did to you.”

“They didn’t push me out.”

“Sure,” Holden says, disinterested in arguing the point. “You shouldn’t have been that surprised, though.”

Bill shrugs. 

“Unless you’re remembering Salt Lake differently than me.”

Bill’s jaw works. Holden can see him defying the urge to take the bait. At last, he replies diplomatically, “I remember the support you got after. They paid the hospital bill. What bothers you about that?”

Holden scoffs. “Please. It wasn’t like they were hanging accolades in my office, or pinning a medal to my chest. That entire investigation was a farce.”

“It was too little too late is what it was. And most of that was the police department’s fault for not inviting us in sooner. My point is that the Bureau took care of you.”

“Yes. Then they put me on desk duty, and forced me to go through the humiliation of a psych eval. They treated me like an invalid and an imbecile, never once recognizing that the reason I might have been so sick is that they were working us to the bone and not giving us the help we needed. I wanted more agents in our department, not a bunch of fucking flowers in a hospital room.”

Bill’s eyebrow rises at the vitriol. He swallows down a bite of snapper, and leans back in his chair, curling his tongue over his teeth and cheek. 

“I thought you were past being pissed at them,” he says, slowly. 

“You know as well as I do that I have as many censures as I do commendations. They only reward the people who work the hardest when it suits them,” Holden says, tempering his tone with a sigh and a glance at the ocean. The tide comes in relentlessly beneath a panoramic blue sky tinged by sunset. Beneath its kind gaze, he feels malleable enough to admit: “After Utah, it wasn’t the Bureau who took care of me. It was you.”

Bill is quiet from the other side of the table. Contemplating the ocean, searching for the answers inside of it, the same as Holden. The softness of his jawline almost appears nostalgic - but a lot of time has passed since Salt Lake. 

“I’ll keep that part out of the book,” Holden adds, quietly. 

Bill shoots him a glare. “Book?”

“Yes, I’m writing again. About Utah.”

Bill’s mouth pinches to one side before he takes another sip of his beer and studies the melted pink horizon. 

“You don’t have anything to say about that?” Holden asks. 

“Why? Would it change anything? It sure as hell didn’t last time.”

“No.”

“Then, no, I don’t have anything to say.”

“I put a percentage of the profits from every book into something good. Shelters for at-risk teens, battered women’s resources-”

“Good for you.”

“I’m trying to explain to you that I’m not just doing this for the applause or recognition. I want to raise awareness, make people realize that the danger isn’t some stranger in a raincoat - it’s people we know, our neighbors. We have to be smarter and more informed. We’ve taught the psychology to beat cops; a lot of the general public can understand it, too.”

“Okay,” Bill says, acquiescing with a wave of his hand. 

Holden can tell it’s just another reassurance to stave off disagreement, not worth pursuing. Looking down at his plate and the remnants of dinner, he quietly wishes that it didn’t matter to him so much what Bill thinks of his life choices, never mind that Holden dedicated the first book to him. He should be past them and their fractured love affair by now. Well past it. 

Charlotte comes by to check on them a little while later, and Bill takes the check from her. He pays in cash for both his meal and Holden’s along with a generous tip for the young lady. She thanks him, and he tells her she deserves it, to go spend it on something for herself. 

Holden wonders when he became so altruistic. Or perhaps he’d always had the capability inside him, but Holden had siphoned all that energy for himself. 

He follows Bill down the exit steps of the The Pier to the sandy beach below. Several yards away, the boardwalk offers a solid ground to walk on, but Bill follows the line of the incoming tide toward a section of beach where there’s fewer people in the water or sunbathing on towels along the shore. 

“So … me convalescing in the hospital - is that all you really remember about Utah?” Holden asks, squinting against the sunlight at Bill’s profile. 

“Of course not.”

“What do you remember the most?”

“Barely sleeping. Fighting public opinion, the media, even the police department.” 

“What else?”

Bill pauses walking for a moment, and turns on his heel in the sand to pin Holden with an intuitive gaze. “Did you come all the way here just to interview me for your book?”

“No.”

“But you thought it might hit two birds with one stone.”

“I thought you might like a say in the book.”

“Why would I want that?”

“Well, I know it was personal for both of us, and-”

“Look, I’ve been on tough cases,” Bill says, holding up a hand. “Plenty of rough ones not much different from Utah. The reason it was personal is because I spent almost every second worrying about you. With good reason, obviously, considering how it turned out.”

Holden looks down at the sand, and runs his toe through the soft, shifting grains. 

“I don’t think my opinions should be in your book,” Bill adds, gruffly. “They’re probably worse than yours. Are you going to put that line about the whole investigation being a farce in?”

“Not in those words exactly.”

“Fine. Just don’t take a shit on the FBI. It isn’t prudent.”

“I won’t.”

Bill resumes walking again, but they get less than ten yards before he clears his throat and says, “So, why did you come here?”

“I told you-”

“I know. BTK being caught was a good excuse, but you flew out here pretty damn quick. After five years, you just show up at my door without warning.”

“That’s not exactly fair.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. I called. I tried to reach out.”

“You called twice,” Bill says, stiffly, jabbing his index and middle fingers upward. “Once to tell me how the book was coming, and again to get my address so you could send me a copy.”

“And both times you weren’t exactly receptive of my calls, were you?”

Bill’s nostrils flare with an incensed breath. “You know the reason for that.”

Holden glances away. The wind is warm against his even hotter cheeks, encouraging the suffocating thud of his pulse. The surge of the ocean coming in blends into white noise with the chaos on his mind. He bites his lower lip, and tries to make the words come out.  _ Just say it. Get it over with _ . But he loses his courage again. 

“I needed some time away to clear my head,” Bill says, at last, his voice finally softening. “I should have done it a lot sooner, you know. Maybe it would have saved us both some heartache.”

Holden nods, and catches Bill’s disappointed gaze. “For five years?”

“I didn’t mean for it to be five years, Holden. I just kind of let myself get carried away with the PI work. It was easier not to think about it.”

“And how much longer would it have been if I hadn’t showed up here?”

Bill averts his gaze, instinctively in an attempt to hide the truth. He draws in a slow breath and purses his lips. His shoulders lift. 

The truth emerges from him without words, but it hits like a sledgehammer across Holden’s sternum, ruthless and overwhelming. 

“Okay,” he whispers, forcing his voice not to shake. “Are you sure you want me in your guest bedroom tonight?”

Bill nods. “You haven’t booked a hotel, have you?”

“No.”

“Then don’t.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but angles his stride toward the boardwalk and the street beyond where he’d parked his car. Most people would have taken his tone and succinct reply for anger, but after all these years, Holden still knows him. Understands perfectly. Whatever bitterness and anger he’d lit out of Virginia with five years ago has transformed into something closer to disappointed resignation. 

Holden can’t blame him. He’s tried Bill’s patience time and again. Taken whatever was given to him without consideration or return. Changed his mind, then back again. He’s done more wrong to the man he loves than anyone should ever have to endure. If all he gets out of this trip is a night in Bill’s guest bedroom, he should count himself lucky. 

* * *

**1992**

**13 years ago**

**Salt Lake City, Utah**

Bill finds him sitting in the hotel bar by himself, nursing a second bourbon after the first that burns in the pit of his stomach. Rows of ceiling-height windows allow in the glow of fading daylight, easing the sharp, frustrated lines on his partner’s face. 

He stands over the table for a moment, hands on his hips. 

Holden stares into his glass while the bourbon turns sour on the back of his tongue. His climbing blood pressure aggravates an already pulsing headache that grips its way around the circumference of his skull. 

“Well,” Bill says, pulling out the chair across from Holden and causing the legs to squeal across the tiled floor. “That was something else.”

Holden flicks his gaze up to momentarily meet Bill’s before avoiding the scathing condemnation. 

“Have anything to say for yourself?” Bill presses, sitting down heavily in the chair and pulling out his cigarettes.

“I wasn’t wrong, was I?” 

“It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about whether or not the local police trust us enough to actually use the profile once we go home - and we are going home, Holden. It’s been almost three weeks. You know the Bureau isn’t going to pay for us to be out here much longer.”

Holden tucks his lower lip between his teeth to quell its urge to tremble. His eyes sting, and he rubs at them with his thumb and forefinger. 

“You can’t take the police chief to task like that,” Bill adds, more gently this time as he’s undoubtedly noting every leaf-like quiver inhabiting Holden’s body. 

Grabbing his bourbon, Holden takes a stiff drink before asserting, “Someone should. He’s not seeing things correctly ever since Jenny was killed. In fact, he should remove himself from the investigation entirely now that a family friend was the victim. I understand his desire to see this case closed quickly, but you can’t just force a theory into reality.”

“I agree, but we have to get him to see that with logic and facts, not a public shaming.”

Holden bites harder at the corner of his lip. He lets his gaze wander away from Bill, to the people in the lobby chattering and mingling as if nothing is wrong in this city. 

The media named him the “Virgin Killer.” They reduced the victims to the status of their sexual activity or lack thereof, determined their worth and sainthood off broken hymens. In life, they were good Mormon girls saving themselves for marriage; in death, helpless victims destroyed for all eternity by strangulation and post-mortem rape. No one believes someone from their religious community could do such a thing. It must be an outsider, and the chief of police, Harry Dodson, has his own theories, namely the Shoshone boyfriend of Jenny Metzinger, the second victim whose father the chief knows well. 

The young man had been questioned rigorously. Despite a weak alibi, they’d had no evidence to arrest him, and further, the third and most recent victim had no discernable connection to him. The lack of any smoking gun, however, hadn’t dislodged Dodson’s belief in his guilt. 

Holden finds the entire rhythm and mood of the investigation to be wildly prejudiced and grossly archaic, and today he couldn’t take it any longer. He told Chief Dodson how he felt. How the profile pointed to someone religious. How it pointed to someone white, someone who knew these girls who were all from the same affiliation of churches and youth groups. How the killer would have some record of violence while Dodson’s prime suspect has none.

“You’re right; I let my emotions get the best of me,” Holden says, finally, and scoffs out a self-deprecating laugh. “What’s new?”

Bill exhales a low sigh. Smoke pours from his lips, clouding the air between them. 

“We’re both exhausted. Overworked,” he admits. 

Holden detects a hint of worry behind Bill’s commiseration, a flash of something more tender in his gray-blue eyes. 

Leaning forward to put his elbows on the table, he lowers his voice as if he has a secret to tell. “I haven’t been able to sleep here. Have you?”

“I never sleep all that well when we’re on a case.”

“No, I mean …” Holden whispers, his voice trailing off into a raspy whisper. “I mean, I  _ can’t sleep.  _ A few hours here and there, but that’s all ...”

Bill’s brows draw into a knotted frown. “The whole time we’ve been here?”

Holden nods. 

“What’s the problem? I mean, we’ve been on tough cases like this one before-”

“Bill, I have three other cases I’m consulting on remotely. Two weeks before we came here, we were in Boston for a week, and a week before that we were in Texas. I feel like every part of my body and brain is in a constant state of jetlag, not to mention-”

Bill waits for him to finish the thought, but when Holden avoids his gaze, he urges, “Not to mention what?”

“Nothing, just …” Holden utters a punctuated sigh. “Pam and I … We-”

Bill’s eyes harden, any scrap of compassion disappearing into the black void he’d flung their affair into for the past four years since Nicky’s birth. As the sorest point of contention between them, they had silently agreed not to discuss Holden’s marriage. They talk about work and only work, and that method of operation has proven effective - until now. Holden can see the fractures beginning to form, a shored up dam on the verge of crumbling.

“We had a fight before I left,” Holden says, evading Bill’s terse stare by smoothing a hand down his tie and knotting his fingers together in his lap. “A blow-out. She threw my suitcase out on the porch.”

“Jesus.”

“She didn’t mean it.”

“No? Sounds pretty serious to me.”

Holden flicks Bill a glare, annoyed at the concealed satisfaction in his tone. “After I picked it up and walked to my car, she ran after me to apologize. It’s just been … a lot. Me traveling, both of the kids in school, her mom’s cancer treatments. She feels alone, and I don’t blame her.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. You think groveling to the director to hire more agents for the unit again will help?”

“We can always try.”

Holden swallows back the lump in his throat, and angles for humor to cut through the tension between them. “Okay, I’m willing to do it, but he’s not really my type; it’s not like I  _ enjoy  _ getting on my knees for him.”

Bill’s mouth twitches. His eyes dart away for an involuntarily second, not quickly enough to hide their dangerous spark of interest at Holden’s thinly veiled innuendo. Clearing his throat, he ambles to his feet, and nods his chin toward the elevators. 

“Come on, we should both go get some rest. You’ve set up a pretty challenging day for us tomorrow at the precinct.”

Tucking a few bills under his half-drunk bourbon, Holden follows Bill out of the hotel bar. As they cross the lobby to the elevators, he studies the back of his head, the broad slope of his shoulders, the sway of his big, calloused hands at his sides - and a deep, poorly buried impulse blooms in his belly. 

What he hadn’t told Bill is that he and Pam haven’t had sex in over four months, and that the last time they did, it was on the heels of an argument, a reckless clash of bodies fueled by anger and little more. That it left them both feeling more empty, more betrayed. He didn’t tell Bill that he wants to feel good again - touched, desired, cherished. 

On another day, in a different city, he might have had the sense to realize that he and Bill have lost those possibilities, but he’s just exhausted and half-drunk enough to convince himself otherwise. 

He steps onto the elevator with Bill, his pulse thumping against his sternum. A storm stirs in his veins, need climbing to new heights with the weightless sway of the elevator. Leaning back against the wall, he tries to quell the hasty impulse with his eyes squeezed shut, but when the indicator dings and the doors hiss open, he follows Bill into the hall with impatient desire nipping at his heels. 

The corridors of the hotel are almost utterly quiet with the deepening night. Their hushed footfalls over the carpet mute Holden’s quickening breathing, the buzz of anticipation in his ears. They reach Holden’s door first. Bill’s is just beyond, three rooms down. 

“‘Night,” Bill mutters, shuffling ahead. 

Holden grips the handle of his door with a sweaty palm. “Bill?”

“Yeah?” 

“How about a nightcap?” Holden suggests, attempting to keep his tone light. 

Bill frowns at him. “Holden it’s past midnight. You just told me you haven’t been able to sleep.”

“Exactly. Tonight probably won’t be any different.”

Bill’s mouth purses against a sigh. His gaze is poorly guarded, flashing indecision clearly from within. 

“Okay,” he says, at last. “One drink.”

Holden bites back a smile, and unlocks his room door. He stands aside to let Bill in ahead of him. 

Bill wanders inside, his gaze circling around the room - pausing distinctly on the bed. Housekeeping had come while they were away. The sheets are pulled taut and tucked under the mattress. The pillows are piled prettily. Holden wants to ruin it all; he wants Bill to spread him across the bedding and ruin him, too. 

Blinking away the frisson of heat moving quicksilver through his body, Holden goes to the minifridge and retrieves two of the small bottles of gin and a can of Sprite. He busies himself mixing the two with ice in the flimsy paper cups meant for morning coffee to create a poor man’s Tom Collins. 

Bill sits down on the loveseat adjacent to the bed, and stretches one arm across the back. His right ankle props itself loosely over his opposite knee. 

Holden draws in a steadying breath as he turns to offer one of the improvised cocktails to Bill. Their fingertips brush in the transition. 

“Thanks,” Bill mutters. 

Holden sits down next to him, and takes a sip of the drink. Without the added sugar or lemon, it’s tart and boozy, but it cuts down his throat to nestle in with the warm desire coiling in his belly. 

“That’s pretty terrible, isn’t it?” He asks, trying for a chuckle as Bill sips on his own drink and winces. 

“Mm,” Bill grunts. “I’ve had worse.”

This remark forces a genuine smile to Holden’s mouth. 

He often wonders if Bill hates him, but every once in awhile, Bill casts him this fond gaze that assures him he doesn’t. They haven’t ever spoken on the topic. Bill had been straight-forward and emotionless when he cut things off between them after that Fourth of July barbeque.  _ It’s in both of our best interests that we don’t continue this relationship privately.  _ It sounded like an amendment in a divorce agreement. As if something as regulated as legal separation could disentangle the barbs they have in one another. Four years later, despite the well-earned rejection, he still feels the sting of that grasp nettled across his ribcage. 

“So,” Holden says, angling for a casual tone. “You haven’t done much sleeping here either?”

Bill’s eyes narrow only slightly but suspiciously. “Like I said, I never do on a case.”

“Good, I, uh … I just wanted to make sure I’m not keeping you up.”

“I’ve gone on less sleep than this.”

Holden purses his lips, and glances at his lap. “I haven’t.”

Bill’s gaze silently needles into him. He doesn’t offer further commiseration, perhaps because he knows where this conversation is leading. 

“It’s strange. I don’t like to sleep alone anymore,” Holden whispers, hesitantly shifting his gaze to find Bill staring at him reticently. 

Holden takes a quick, bolstering sip of his drink. The carbonated fizz of the Sprite burns the back of his throat, and his cheeks grow hot as his own pathetic, flagrant attempt at seduction limps into the middle of the conversation. 

“I dream about the cases a lot,” he continues, rushed. “Nightmares. When I wake up in an unfamiliar place, completely alone, it’s difficult to …”

Bill shifts uncomfortably on the cushion beside him, arm retracting from the back of the loveseat, both feet planting on the floor to ready him for retreat. 

Holden can feel him recoiling. Desperation launches like a flare through his chest, burning hot and quick and bright. His hand moves to grasp Bill’s knee before he can reconsider his impertinent haste. 

“Bill, please, just wait a second,” he whispers, body tumbling forward across the space between them until his chest meets with Bill’s shoulder. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Bill demands, catching him by the shoulder to shove him back. 

“What does it look like?” Holden asks, searching Bill’s pinched sneer wildly for any sign of requited desire. 

“It looks like you’ve had too much to drink, and you’re forgetting that we’ve been over this,” Bill bites out, though he doesn’t try to stand from the loveseat. 

“No, I know what I’m doing.” 

Grabbing the paper cup of half-drunk cocktail from Bill’s hand, Holden sets both their drinks aside on the coffee table, and turns to clutch Bill’s chest. Their faces are mere inches apart, exchanging accelerated breaths. 

Bill scowls, but his hand settles on Holden’s hip. 

“If you know what you’re doing, then you know you should stop,” he says in a low, raspy whisper. 

“I don’t want to,” Holden murmurs, leaning closer. “I want you. Please, Bill. You don’t even have to return the favor. I just want-”

“What?” Bill interjects, turning his mouth away from Holden’s. “Holden, stop-”

“I know you want it, too. I saw that look in your eyes when I talked about getting on my knees. I know you want to see me on my knees for you instead.” 

Color rises on Bill’s cheek, and his gaze flickers hesitantly to Holden’s pleading stare. An unsteady breath rattles into his lungs beneath the pressure of Holden’s hands on his chest. 

“You want your cock in my mouth …” Holden presses, leaning in until their lips brush against one another, filthy predictions vibrating against the quivering rim of Bill’s lower lip. “Wanna fuck my throat so hard …”

Bill blinks, and swallows hard. “Holden, you-”

“Do you want me to swallow, too? I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want-”

With that debased suggestion, Bill shoves Holden back with a grunt. He climbs to his feet, eyes flashing. 

“What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

Holden spills back against the arm of the loveseat, eyes prickling with humiliation and desperation. 

“I just wanted-”

“I know what you wanted, and it’s time for you to accept that it’s over. All right? It’s over. Now stop making a fucking fool of yourself.” Bill’s voice rises to a clipped shout as he cuts an incensed hand through the air. 

Holden turns his chin away, and presses his eyes shut to conceal the quiver that rises up his belly from a place deep inside that’s desperately alone. He aches to be touched. Even now as Bill shouts at him, it’s better than the vacant corners of the hotel room staring back at him. 

Bill whirls around to leave, and Holden leaps up from the couch. He barely manages to catch Bill by the wrist. The tension between their arms jolts taut, forcing Bill back around by his own momentum. 

“Please,” Holden whispers, clutching Bill’s arm with both hands. “Don’t go.”

Bill hesitates for a moment, the anger in his eyes subsiding to reveal the glimmer of compassion. No, not compassion; something worse -  _ pity _ . 

“Holden,” he says, quietly, yet firmly. “Call your wife.”

Holden swallows against the lump swelling at the back of his throat. His fingers feel numb as Bill extracts his arm, and marches toward the door. Not wishing to watch him leave, Holden sinks back down to the couch, and presses a hand over his eyes. 

He hears the door swing shut behind Bill, the automatic lock click. In the utter silence of the room, one ragged sob scrapes from his throat before he sucks in a few deep breaths and swallows the rest back down. 

Dragging himself from the sofa, he goes to the bathroom to use the shower. He stands immobile beneath the hot spray for a long time, listening to the rhythmic drum of the water hitting the base blur into a mass of white noise that doesn’t quite drown out his thoughts. Finally, he focuses on scrubbing himself down with the soapy washcloth until his skin is rosy and humming. 

When he gets out, he ignores his reflection in the foggy mirror, and puts on one of the fluffy bathrobes provided by the hotel. Emerging from the steaming heat of the bathroom, he sits on the edge of the still perfectly made bed, and dials his home phone number. 

Pam answers on the fourth ring, and sounds tired. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”

“I was just about to go to bed.”

“Sorry it’s late. Long day.”

“How’s it going?”

Holden purses his lips against the automatic answer of “not well.” Pam has enough on her mind; she doesn’t need to know all the harrowing details. She doesn’t need to know that he’s so burnt-out and exhausted that he’d resorted to his oldest, worst habit. If she doesn’t already hear the tremble in his voice, she’ll surely hear it the moment he admits this case is sending his mental stability plunging to abysmal depths. 

“Holden?” Pam whispers. 

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We’ll probably be coming home soon. I have a feeling Quantico will be recalling us by the end of the week.”

“Good.”

“How’s your mom?” Holden asks, and braces himself for dreadful descriptions of the hospital walls and a dimly lit room where his mother-in-law lies in cancerous agony, trying one decimating treatment after another to ward off the cells eating away at her body. In some ways, he and Pam’s battlegrounds are the same. 

They talk for half an hour before Pam insists that she needs to go to bed. Holden selfishly whispers he wishes they could talk more - not because he misses her, but because he knows that as soon as the room plunges into silence, he’ll be left to contend with his thoughts completely alone. 

Once she bids him goodnight, he turns off the lights and lays down in bed for all the good it will do. His mind is already racing and twisting with the details of every case he is working, and the equally loud if not more sickening tide of his self-hatred. 

Finally, after tossing and turning for another hour, he ignores the blaring warning labels on his bottle of Xanax -  _ DO NOT TAKE WITH ALCOHOL -  _ and pops one of the pills. It takes another hour for his tightly coiled muscles and clamoring thoughts to relax. 

He doesn’t sleep until it’s well past three, and he’s closer to the sunrise than he is to the shadows of the night. It’s a fitful sleep, plagued by anger and death, and when he’s jarred from it’s clutches by his alarm clock and the bright, six-thirty A.M. sunlight, he’s grateful to be in the land of the living once more. 

**.**

**.**

**.**

  
  


Three days later, Holden loses his composure at a crime scene for the first time in nearly a decade. 

The call came in at 9:30, half an hour after the conclusion of their daily morning briefing. The local sheriff had been called out by a ranger at the Legacy Nature Preserve after seeing what appeared to be human remains on the grounds. The deputy who responded quickly confirmed that there indeed was a cadaver barely concealed by leaves and twigs in a small clearing within the two-thousand acre bird sanctuary. Despite being outside of city limits, the crime scene is only a fifteen minute drive away, offering Holden little opportunity to steel himself for what they’re about to witness. 

Yet another sleepless night had passed in the dark hours prior. The stress eating away at his nerves and the consistent doses of Xanax hold any sense of hunger at bay. As a result, he’d downed three cups of coffee in lieu of breakfast this morning. Meanwhile, the gentle, arid breeze of weeks past has turned to the humidity of early July, compounding his existing exhaustion with oppressive heat. 

By the time they reach the crime scene, he’s sweating profusely beneath the layers of his button-down and jacket. A clammy, sick feeling cascades down his body as they step out of the car to see the crime scene techs filing like ants into the woods in their white uniforms, lugging trunks of equipment behind them. 

Casey and Barrows, the lead detectives on the case, are talking with the park ranger and the sheriff’s deputy. The entire area is cordoned off by yellow tape. Much to everyone’s relief, the press has yet to get wind of this dumpsite. Their only audience is competing choruses of varying bird species disturbing the tree branches overhead. 

Casey waves them over. “Hey, guys, Deputy Mueller and Ranger Mason here were just explaining to us how they came upon the body.”

They make quick introductions before Bill urges the deputy, who appears pale and shaken, to continue his account. 

“Well, I came on over as soon as I got the call,” Mueller says, twisting his hat around in his hand. “Mason led me to where she was. He hadn’t touched anything.”

“Yep, she was covered up with some leaves and such, and I could just see her hand sticking out,” Mason adds. “Right away, I called the sheriff’s office.”

Mueller shakes his head. “I’ve never seen a dead body before, much less one that was so …”

“So what?” Holden asks. 

“I think she’d been there awhile. The animals kinda … got to her.”

“So this could be an earlier victim,” Bill remarks, garnering nods of agreement from Casey and Barrows. “Maybe even the first depending on rate of decay. He obviously went to some trouble to hide the body out here in the middle of nowhere.” 

“Good,” Holden says, turning to squint towards the trees where the crime scene is nestled. 

“Good?” Mueller echoes, indignantly. “What could be good about any of this?”

“I just mean that earlier victims help us establish more confidently who’s doing this. If he went to such lengths to conceal the body, he could have known her.”

The young deputy looks cowed, but Holden doesn’t appreciate the disparaging stare. Has Chief Dodson’s poison reached outside the police precinct? The media already buys his theory about the killer being an outsider or the Native American boyfriend. People will do anything to cling onto their prejudices. 

“Can we go take a look?” Holden asks, impatient to get this stage of the day over with. 

“We should probably wait for CSU,” Barrows says. 

“I agree. We don’t want to trample important evidence,” Bill says, casting Holden a stern gaze that queries,  _ Don’t you know that?  _

Holden glances away, biting his lower lip, but nods his agreement. 

While they wait, Casey suggests he take Mason and Mueller back to the station to get their official statements. Barrows goes into the park ranger station to locate the bathroom, leaving Bill and Holden alone in the lot beneath the waxing summer sun. The muggy heat irrigates a trail of sweat down Holden’s spine. 

Bill leans against the hood of their rental, and pulls out another cigarette. 

“What’s the matter?”

“What do you mean what’s the matter?”

“I mean you’re pacing like a caged animal,” Bill says, snapping his lighter shut and waving the smoking cigarette at him. 

“We have maybe two days left here, and a whole new victim to process,” Holden says, ignoring Bill’s stare tracking his steps back and forth across the asphalt. “A better question is, where’s  _ your  _ sense of urgency?”

“We’re doing the best we can.”

“Well, it’s not enough.”

“You always say that,” Bill says, irritation slipping into his tone. “Christ, Holden. You let yourself care too much, this job will kill you. No matter what, we always turn up after the deed is done, the victim dead. It’s hard to grapple with, but that’s the job.”

“That’s apathy,” Holden says, casting Bill a cutting glare.

“Fine, don’t listen to me.”

“Good, I’m not.”

“Well, you never do. Do you?”

Holden’s feverish pacing comes to a stop, the toes of his shoes nearly aligned with Bill’s. 

Bill inhales and exhales smoke with his eyes squinted against the sunlight reaching over the trees. He doesn’t flinch from Holden’s fuming gaze. 

A few years ago, Bill would have laughed at this point. Said,  _ you haven’t learned have you? Still got that big, blue flame shooting out of your ass?  _ Then Holden would have retorted that Bill is just getting too old for this job, and he can’t keep up with Holden’s pace. They both would have laughed. But some cuts are too deep, and they’ve both hit bone. There’s nothing left but vital organs. It’s time to stop jabbing. 

Another fifteen minutes pass, and Holden is baking beneath the sun. He pauses his pacing only because he needs to lean against the car to rest. The bone-deep exhaustion that has followed him for nights on end tugs at him now, begging him to sink down to the sidewalk in a puddle of unconscious limbs. Nervous jitters leave his hands trembling, and silently, he curses that third cup of coffee on top of an empty stomach this morning. 

By the time they’re called down to the crime scene, a dizzy buzz in his brain crowds out all else. He plods down the trail behind Bill, concentrating on the black shine of his bootheels striking the ground again and again. Step after step down a slight incline until they reach a cove in the trees, a fairytale plot of wildflower-peppered grass where the sun reaches in a golden halo past the treetops to cast this victim’s resting place in resplendent light.

As they draw closer, the warm spice of tree bark and the saccharine scent of the flowers is overpowered by the stench of death. The rotting corpse is unburied from her shallow, leafy grave. Gray skin, long drained of blood is stretched in scraps over the bones, gnawed free by wildlife. For the damage, her body is well intact. Someone had protected her, tended to her. 

Holden wanders closer, hand rising to his mouth. His stomach turns, and the buzz in his ears evolves to a deafening ring. 

“He didn’t bury her. I think we’ll find all the mutilation and sexual assault is post-mortem,” Bill is saying, but his voice sounds far away. “He’s been coming back here to visit the body. We should look at anyone in the Forestry service, someone who has access to the grounds after-hours. Don’t you agree, Holden?”

Holden can’t answer. He can taste the stinging bile boiling at the back of his tongue. 

He stumbles into the treeline, and vomits his scant breakfast of black coffee into the grass in three violent heaves. The world buzzes around him, voices fading in and out, his vision tunneling and sharpening in nauseating fluctuations. 

When it passes, he’s crouched in the grass on his heels, one hand braced on his knee to stabilize himself, the other cradling his sweating forehead. 

Bill is at his side, hand on his back. 

“Jesus, Holden. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Holden mutters. 

“Do you need a doctor?”

“No. I said I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You’ve got no color in your cheeks. Do you feel feverish?” Bill asks, keeping his voice low despite the worry contained inside it. 

Holden shakes his head. 

“Hey, is he okay?” Casey asks from behind them. 

“He’s fine, just give us a minute,” Bill snaps, waving the detective off. 

Once they’re alone again, he gently pinches Holden’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and turns his face toward him. The back of his hand presses to Holden’s clammy cheek, dabbing along his temple and to his forehead. 

“You feel hot,” he whispers. 

“It’s just the humidity. I’m okay,” Holden whispers, weakly. 

“Come on, let’s get you back to the car.”

“No, I need to stay - look at the scene-”

“You’re not doing any of that. Come on.” 

Bill’s tone brooks no argument, and Holden can’t protest as Bill grips him by the elbow and hauls him to his feet. 

“Can you stand?” Bill asks, slipping his arm around Holden’s waist. 

Holden nods. 

“Okay, let’s go.”

Bill doesn’t let go of his elbow as he leads them out of the treeline. He tells Casey he’s taking Holden back to the car so he can recuperate in the AC for several minutes. 

Holden musters a faint smile as Casey asks if he’s okay. “Fine. I think I just got overheated.”

“Yeah, doesn’t help that all you ate for breakfast was coffee,” Bill grumbles. 

They make their way at a gradual pace down the forest path toward the car park. Bill doesn’t relinquish his arm from Holden’s waist, but he doesn’t say anything either. His gaze is fixed straight ahead, brows drawn into a scowl. 

When they reach the car, he guides Holden into the passenger’s seat, and reaches across him to put the keys in the ignition. The air conditioning comes on, sputtering lukewarm air across Holden’s cheeks until it goes cold. 

“You gonna be okay if I leave you here?” Bill asks. 

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Okay. I have to get back to the crime scene, but don’t think this is over,” Bill says, sternly. “We’re going to have a talk later.”

“A talk? What am I - twelve years old?”

“Well, if you’re going to act like one then maybe that’s how I should treat you.”

“Fuck you, Bill,” Holden says, wearily, averting his gaze to the lint lining the dashboard. 

“Fine. Hate me all you want, but I can tell when you’re wearing yourself too thin. You can’t let it go to this point, all right? At some point, it crosses a line of professionalism.”

Holden wants to argue over two things: he doesn’t hate Bill, and none of this is his fault. He’s doing his best. All that he can. He’s sacrificed his mind for this job, and now he’s sacrificing his body, too. The least Bill could do is take care of one of those things. 

But the car door slams shut before he can work up the effort to open his mouth. He closes his eyes to the relieving blast of the AC, and doesn’t watch Bill march back into the woods. 

**.**

**.**

**.**

Bill doesn’t speak to him on the drive back to the precinct. With the window halfway down, he smokes fervidly. The cloying smell of nicotine irritates the acid burn of vomit still lingering at the back of Holden’s throat and his dry, aching eyes, but he doesn’t complain. If Holden is allowed his pills and bad cocktails, Bill is more than allowed his cigarettes. 

By the time they get back, the morning is gone and most of the afternoon as well. The coroner’s office had only been allowed to take the body from the crime scene after CSU was done collecting evidence and taking photos, and Bill and Holden had reviewed the scene.

Bill prefers to take his own pictures on a disposable camera despite the techs having possession of high quality, digital devices. He hands the camera off to a uniformed officer, and orders him to take it to the print shop immediately to have the snapshots processed. As soon as the officer is gone, a secretary informs them that Gunn called while they were out. 

“Did he leave a message?” Bill asks. 

“He just wanted a progress report,” the secretary replies, handling Bill the slip she had written the message on. 

“Thanks,” Bill mutters, wearily. 

Holden pinches back a sigh with his lips. “We don’t have time for a progress report.”

“Right.” Bill turns to the secretary. “Call him back. Let him know we’ve got a new victim, but not much information on her yet. We can arrange a conference call for tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

As she leaves, Holden rubs his eyes. “Great. You bought us one more day.”

“Yeah, so let’s make the best of it.”

They round up the task force members to go over the details of the new victim and scene. 

CSU had sent over several photographs which are now displayed on the corkboard with the other three victims. The pictures are ghastly, depicting the thoroughly rotten corpse in the final stages of decay which exposes white bone and clusters of insects at the small bits of softer remains. The public will never see these pictures, but Holden thinks that if they did, they might disavow themselves of the risqué notion of a “virgin killer.” 

“As you all know, the Park Ranger service found this newest victim in the Legacy Nature Preserve at around 8:00 this morning,” Bill announces, waving his finger at the board depicting the scene in the woods. “Preliminary findings from the coroner’s office suggest she’d been there for a couple months based on the advanced rate of decay, but we’ll have to wait for the full autopsy to get an exact timeline.”

“ID’ing this victim is going to be difficult,” Holden adds. “From what we could tell, there were no distinctive marks or tattoos on the body, and most of the fingers and teeth were already gone. We’re going to have to rely on forensics in this case, and a little help from the public.”

“That’s right. We’ll cast a wide net,” Bill says. “Someone probably knows this girl is missing if she’s anything like our other three victims. We’ll need to comb back through missing persons reports for anyone matching victimology.”

“Is it possible this girl could be unrelated to the other victims?” one of the detectives asks, raising his pen. 

“It could be, but the crime rate here is pretty low. To have another murder like this attributed to a different killer would be surprising. Until proven otherwise, we’ll treat this victim as a part of our investigation,” Bill says. 

“Our first order of business should be the missing persons reports,” Holden says, turning to Chief Dodson who is lingering to their left with his arms crossed. “Chief, we should assign a number of people to that task. Anyone we can spare. We’ll have to talk to a lot of families with missing daughters or sisters.”

“Of course, that’s common sense,” Dodson says, briskly. He doesn’t give Holden a chance to respond to the barb before he continues, “And what about suspects? I’m sure you noticed the nature preserve backs up against reservation land.”

Holden clenches his teeth. He can feel every eye in the room watching him, waiting for a response. He’s culled out the sheep from the herd, of which there are a staggering number. Only a few black sheep remain, defying Dodson’s delusion that a Native American person committed these crimes. Most of the men are nodding their agreement. 

“It’s also a ten minute drive from here,” Holden says, coolly.

Dodson’s brow furrows. “What does that mean?”

“He means it could be anyone.” Bill interrupts before the exchange can grow heated. “What we should be looking at is people with access to the park. It’s a nature preserve. They don’t allow just anyone in there. We’ve already requisitioned an employee roster, and we’ll start cross-checking it against the victims and the profile as soon as we have it in our possession.”

Dodson grumbles an agreement, but his baleful gaze doesn’t move from Holden. Ignoring it, Holden presses on with the briefing with as much fortitude as he can exude. The weight of Dodson’s gaze isn’t alone in bearing down upon his resolve; what little energy three cups of coffee had imbued in his exhausted mind and sapped body had exited into the grass right along with the vomit. Facing the rest of the day seems a nearly insurmountable task. He silently wishes he could lay down his head and close his eyes for just ten minutes; just one small break and he’ll be back on his feet - he’ll be okay. 

When the meeting concludes, Bill and Holden return to their corner of the precinct that they have occupied and made their own for the past few weeks. Two desks face one another and are shoved close together in a mimicry of the nascent BSU days. 

There’s no avoiding Bill’s gaze as Holden’s weary drop to his chair pushes a ragged sigh from his chest. 

Holden logs into the desktop computer, and toggles to the missing persons reports in the Salt Lake City PD’s database. The file numbers in the thousands as the secretaries continue working on digitizing all of the information from the old paper files. There’s records of missing girls from ten years ago at his fingertips; where such accessibility was once exhilarating, he now finds it daunting. 

“Are you going to help me?” He asks, tartly, as Bill doesn’t move. 

“I think we should grab some lunch.”

“Lunch? After what we just saw?”

“Yeah, you should eat something.” 

Holden shifts his gaze around the corner of the computer screen. 

Bill is gazing at him sternly. 

“I’m fine.” 

“You don’t want to go somewhere? Fine, I’ll just get one of the officers to go down the street and grab something from the drive through,” Bill says, starting to rise to his feet with his hand fishing in his pocket for his wallet. 

“Bill, we don’t have time for this,” Holden snaps. “Ted is breathing down our necks, and I’m surprised Dodson hasn’t lodged a complaint against me yet so we should just keep working.”

“You need food, rest-”

“Please,” Holden says, tersely, pressing his eyes shut against the bubbling frustration and humiliation in his chest. “Stop acting like you give a shit.”

The silence is filled in with the ring of telephones and the chatter of other detectives and officers around them. Bill doesn’t respond until Holden’s aching eyelids have fluttered open again. 

“I do,” he says, his tone low and pinched with irritation. “ Christ, Holden - of course I do. You’re still my partner-”

“Then at least stop acting like my wife. God knows I don’t need another one of her.”

The retort leaps impulsively from Holden’s mouth, tailed closely by instantaneous regret. Heat floods his cheeks as he realizes most of the bullpen is witnessing this exchange, a latent lover’s quarrel unidentified only because of the rough, masculine borders of the precinct. 

Bill glares at him, a flush working up his throat. A curse is on the brink of passing his lips when Dodson’s office door on the opposite side of the room swings open. 

“Ford, Tench - a minute?”

Holden’s head swivels to see the chief standing in the doorway with his hands braced on his hips. If he’s not mistaken, the man looks triumphant. 

Bill marches past him without a word, and Holden has to rush to catch up with him. His knees feel weak, his head dizzy with the sudden burst of action as if every worn fiber in his body protests haste. He blinks away the black prickling the corners of his vision when he gets to the doorway of Dodson’s office where Bill is asking what this is all about. 

“Close the door,” Dodson suggests, circling back around his desk to sit down. 

Holden pulls the door shut behind them. 

Dodson picks up the telephone receiver, and presses the hold button. “Director, are you still there?”

Holden’s stomach sinks. He casts Bill a nervous glance that’s met with an equal dose of dread. 

“Yes, they’re here with me. One moment,” Dodson says. He casts them both a thin smile as he puts the phone on speaker, settles the receiver in the cradle, and steeples his hands in front of him. 

“Bill, Holden - good afternoon.” The unmistakable, poised drawl of Ted Gunn reaches from the telephone speaker. 

“Good afternoon, sir,” Bill replies, recovering from his shock faster than Holden. “Did you get my message?”

“I did. The same as I’m sure you received mine to call immediately with a status update.”

“As I’m sure Chief Dodson relayed to you, we’ve been pretty busy all morning with the discovery of the new body.”

“Yes, he told me all about this new victim,” Ted says, already dismissive. “No discernible ID, no discernible MO, no autopsy back yet. Tell me - how long does it usually take for the coroner to return an autopsy report on a victim in such a state of decomposition?”

“Could be a few weeks,” Dodson remarks before either Bill or Holden can work up a reply. 

“A few weeks we don’t have. Now you’ve presented your profile, and it sounds like Chief Dodson has a good grasp on what you’ve come up with,” Ted continues. “I’m not quite sure what else you can offer to this investigation when we have several other police departments requesting our assistance.”

Holden nearly chokes on a building retort that  _ no, Chief Dodson does not grasp the profile;  _ but Bill’s hand incrementally touches his wrist, stopping him from stepping forward to shout his dismay into the phone. 

“We’re arranging for your flight out tomorrow,” Ted says. “My secretary will contact you with the details.”

“Of course, sir.” Bill says, diplomatic as ever. 

“Good. And, Bill?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Next time, just pick up the phone.”

The call drops with a click that seems to echo through Dodson’s office. 

“Well,” Dodson says, leaning back in his chair. “What a pity. I’ll be sad to see you guys go.”

Holden glares at him. Simmering rage burns a hole in his gut and travels upward. His wobbling reserve maintains just a few seconds longer before buckling entirely. 

“You don’t have to bother lying, Chief. I know this is what you wanted. I’ve bothered you since the moment we walked in the door.”

“Holden-” Bill begins, warily. 

“Ford,” Dodson interrupts, rising slowly to his feet to attain a defensive stance. “The only thing that’s  _ bothered  _ me is having some guy twenty years my junior walk into  _ my  _ police department and try to tell me how to do this job after I’ve been at it for thirty years.”

“Girls are dying. We just want to help put an end to that, and instead, you’re focused on your ego. Where is your moralistic sense of justice you pretend to be dedicated to?”

“It’s right here, you arrogant prick,” Dodson retorts, jabbing a hand to his chest. “You’re the FBI. You were supposed to tell me something I didn’t already know.”

“Okay, everyone calm down,” Bill interjects, putting a hand on Holden’s shoulder as enraged disbelief propels him forward. “We’ve all done the best we can, and-”

“We did,” Holden seethes, ignoring Bill’s mediation. “We did tell you something you didn’t already know if you had cared enough to listen - if you weren’t so obsessed with the nonsensical Indian boyfriend angle.”

“Holden, come on. Let’s just go,” Bill says, his voice low and calm except for a minute tremor that winds through Holden’s name. 

“Jackson Bearclaw barely has an alibi for the night of Jenny’s murder,” Dodson defends himself. “He was always trying to get her into trouble. Her father never liked him. He’s a little punk and everyone knows it-”

“A ‘punk’? And that makes him a murderer?” Holden presses. 

“ _ Holden, _ ” Bill repeats, grasping him by the elbow. “Let it go. There’s no point.”

“Point?” Holden whispers, shifting his gaze to Bill’s strained expression of worry. “ _ Point?  _ The point is that girls are being dragged into the woods, butchered, and raped! The point is that we have tried playing nice for three fucking weeks, and our help - which is funded by the tax payers, the constituents of this town who would really like to see this killer apprehended - has been ignored and discounted at every turn. The point is that we are going to leave here, and this asshole isn’t going to do a thing we said he should. Now, you both tell me-” He casts his glare between Dodson and Bill who are both regarding him with differing yet equal measures of disdain and concern. “-have we really done our best?” 

Dodson scoffs, scornfully. “Agent Ford, I wish you the best. Now get the fuck out of my office.” 

Holden swallows hard against incensed and mortified emotion clawing its way up his throat. 

“Come on,” Bill murmurs, tugging on his arm. 

Holden takes a shuffled step back, but can’t convince himself to follow Bill’s gentle command. 

“Chief,” he says, his voice raw and trembling. “If you do nothing - if you ignore our advice and keep pursuing the investigation in the way you have been - more girls will die. And if they do, it’s going to be on your conscience.” 

Dodson’s jowls and creased cheeks flush pink, and his eyes spark with rage. He jabs a finger at the door. “I said, get  _ the fuck  _ out of my office!”

“Holden-” Bill repeats, but his voice is muffled, ebbing beyond Holden’s stream of consciousness like a distant recording of a recording playing in another room. 

His blood pressure roars in his ears, and his empty stomach clenches and rolls with an incensed spasm. The chills rippling down his body evolve to prickling heat, the last sensation he notices before everything goes numb with white rage. 

Ripping his arm from Bill’s grasp, he whirls around to yank the door open. When he steps just outside, the detectives and officers in the bullpen who had been watching the closed door of the chief’s office intently are staring at him. Most of them don’t try to make a show of looking away. They’re like spectators in a theater, watching him unravel. 

He turns away from their prying eyes. 

Dodson circles from behind his desk, hands clutched at his hips. Bill is standing between them, intent upon blocking physical confrontation with his own body. He says something to Dodson, but it’s entirely ignored - and Holden can’t hear it, can’t focus around the dam splintering and overflowing in his mind. 

“Look at all these men, Chief,” he says, his voice echoing in his ears, as if from outside his own body. “They’re all standing here waiting for you to tell them what to do - to lead them in the right direction; but you are so blinded by your own prejudices that you can’t even see what’s right in front of you. This man who’s doing this is not some teenager you busted once or twice for smoking weed. I’ll tell you who he is. He is a mature, experienced, determined man who knows these girls, their type, just how to lure them. He’s been doing it for years, and now he’s perfected his method. He is so good at what he does that everyone thinks he’s completely normal. It could be anyone - the youth pastor, the deacon, the school principal. Hell, he could be in this very building right now. He could walk up to you right this second and confess his sins, and you wouldn’t even believe it!”

“What?” Dodson demands. “In this building? Are you accusing someone here?”

“That isn’t what Agent Ford meant,” Bill says, putting a hand on Dodson’s shoulder. “He just meant that-”

“I know what he meant!” Dodson says, brushing past Bill. “Ford, get back here, and take that back. Take it back right now!”

The buzz overtakes Holden’s ears. A small sliver of light inside the encroaching darkness of his mind tells him that he’s gone too far, but it’s late. It’s all too late. Everything. Every part of this trip. 

He can feel every pair of eyes in the room boring into him as he whirls around, and marches for the door. It could have been utterly silent, or they could have been shouting angrily at him; he doesn’t know because the buzzing in his ears has reached a shrill, deafening ring, and the black prickling at the edges of his vision keeps narrowing and widening like a dizzying kaleidoscope. 

He forces himself to keep walking even as the strength saps out of his knees, pushing past the obstructing pattern of desks, toward the door of the bullpen. His eyes are on the bathroom door, and he tells himself that he just needs to swallow a Xanax or two to get himself together. 

He never makes it. The room rocks like a boat at sea, and he can’t feel his legs anymore. The fall happens in slow motion, then all at once. The floor comes rushing up to greet him; he doesn’t feel it’s harsh kiss against his cheek as the pinpoint of light at the end of the vision closes, dragging him away into the relief of darkness. 


End file.
